“I’d be delighted to stay here in Russia and play the season to the end. There’s just enormous desire,” he said at the All-Star weekend. “But unfortunately, our desires don’t always match our abilities,” he added, referring to his NHL contract obligations.

All right, so both Kovalchuk and Datsyuk are coming back to the NHL without raising too much of a stink but quotes like these won’t sit well with some fans.

Before some of you get ready to run them off, look at it from their perspective. They got to play pro hockey at home in front of their own country’s fans. The one thing Datsyuk is doing a bit differently from Kovalchuk, however, is he’s making his feelings known without making his NHL fans anxious.

Meanwhile, he was doing stuff like this during the KHL skills competition today. Sorry Russia, we’ll be happy to have him back here.

Minnesota Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk has been the most difficult goalies to score against this season. Leave it to a high-level player like Leon Draisaitl to make it look this, well, “easy.”

Draisaitl scored his 13th goal of 2016-17 by capping this pretty give-and-go play with Benoit Pouliot. You can see the frustration from Dubnyk at the end of the tally, as if he was saying “How was I supposed to stop that?” (though probably with more colorful language).

Draisaitl came into Friday with five goals and three assists in his last five games, so he’s been almost unstoppable lately.